RP: YSS Imperator [YSS Imperator] Mission Two: Going In Deep

YSS Imperator Bridge

"They're in two main groups, continuing to push away from the breach lengthwise! Blast door three to the port pyramid is being compromised, they're heading for... The shopping district? Fore team is continuing to... They're not charging the bridge directly? DC node thirty-five just got torn apart, and the trail seems to be heading towards the base of the main array!" The officer's pale fingers danced upon the screen of her console as if it were a stove, redirecting squadrons of soldiers, sending technicians towards the breached hole from the initial assault, a joint squadron of armored troops and techies set to follow both known L'kor forces to analyze damages more precisely than Megami's helpful estimations. Of course, that was the interior battle.


"The enemy carrier is doing negligible damage to the barrier, sir. However... Their craft are deliberately targeting our larger weapons. I suggest we use them to remove the enemy capital ship from the field before we lose all of our major offensive capabilities. We can modify the combined field system to fire around the main hull if needed!" Serphine bit at the inside of her cheek, her right wing visibly twitching tensely before re-folding behind her.

"The defensive grid will defend us from their assaults for the time being, but the continued impacts are pockmarking our hull. Even if they don't hit anything major directly, they're going to tear us apart to bleed out with a thousand cuts at this rate. There's a burning set of mass dangerously close to the main array, which could destabilize it. I recommend not firing the weapon while the debris remains."

YSS Imperator
Bridge
Tactical Station

At this range, the distance between themselves and the Imperator forced the Neko to maintain discipline, resisting the urge to simply call upon the super-heavy turrets and use them to break this stalemate. Yet it had to be done, but Ayane knew better then to fire on her own allies by mistake, and so, the Nekovalkyrja decidedly activated the upper-most, port-side turrets and began bringing them to bear on the nearby L'Kor carrier responsible for spitting out so much chaos. She left the point-defense turrets and missile launchers on their preset settings, leaving it up to the ship's systems to defend itself and it's charges from harm. Quickly, the weapons operator began tapping commands and setting up changes to make sure that once she went down this path, the firing solutions would be so pin-point accurate, she would put her instructors back at Ichiban to shame.

Outside in the deadness of space, the Sharie-class battleship 'Imperator' stood proudly among it's peers, the craters of superficial damage that pockmarked its hull a symbol of it's heritage and purpose. To stand the test of time, be the bastion of it's people, and to rip an enemy command ship's throat out. Eight shielded ball bases began to retract, the glimmer and glare of exploding fighters, bombers, and shuttles glancing off their surfaces as they deposited their menacing charges up towards the surface. In unison, timed within .11 seconds of each other, they fired off a coordinated lance of Aether energy towards the L'Kor carrier.

Click to expand...

Adelphress had just finished eating at the galley, and had been in her room most of the mission. In her hands was a mug of hot cocoa, as she sat on the top bunk of her quarters. She often sat on the top so her extremely long tail had enough room to wrap around the room without her sitting on a bunch of it. It was a peaceful day, until a sudden jolt and sound came from somewhere on the ship. It scared Adelphress so much her mug of hot cocoa went into the air, crashing against a part of her tail on the floor, broken. "Fuck me." She said as condition one was made, she thrusted herself onto the ground and over to her closet, where her EV Suit was located. It took her close to ten minutes to put it on her long body, but once she did and finally put her helmet on, she grabbed her side arm and opened her quarters door, not even bothering with her broken mug and spilled hot cocoa. She hasn't really done much with her time on the Imperator, besides getting to know a few of the crew and dissecting a deceased prisoner of war. They are awfully fascinating, and couldn't wait to interact with a friendly alive one, but that was unlikely.

Now she was ready for duty as she headed out of her quarters- her long, suited tail behind her.

Bridge

Taiyou called out as she stood from her chair, "All personnel to their stations! We have a hull breech! Boarding parties have filtered in. I repeat—" She stated the orders again while keying in to the non-essential volumetric displays around the ship to intermittently show the locations of the boarders and in big, bold, and no uncertain terms to dispose of them immediately.

Space

The Sharie's superheavy battery, at this range, couldn't miss. With bright blue shines, the beams left their turrets with the power and anger of the Empress herself. Eight separate connection points were soon surrounded in explosions. The L'Kor carrier veered wildly from it's course, pushed towards its starboard side by the sheer connecting force alone. Another set of subdued explosions followed as the carrier seemed to be burning from every hole in its hull.

The heavy cruiser that had been rammed was thrown to it's port side by the shifting capital ship. Another cruiser was hit by the wounded carrier's movements, rolling violently as their hulls scrapped into each other, small explosions visible as conduits blew.

Meanwhile with the battleships, one of the L'Kor ships fired off its plasma lance, striking two heavy cruisers at point blank. Their barriers down, and large burn marks easily seen across the damaged Star Army vessels. One of the other two Sharies, YSS Dominator, opened up in retaliation with its entire ventral battery, rapidly firing salvo after salvo.

At this point, all ships had their weapons online, and the third L'Kor battleship was getting hammered by a mass of cruisers and the flagship.

A solid detonation followed the L'Kor battleship down below, as the YSS Dominator finished it off through it's continuous ventral salvos. It detonated as if it broke it's back, collapsing from the top down. The remaining battleship was still fighting, but was quickly succumbing to the combined firepower.

With a bright flash, the remaining battleship detonated, showering the fleet with debris as every inch of it went up in a gigantic fireball. That left only the stricken carrier. The carrier was vacating its decks with any craft that would fly, and even power armor teams were leaping from the deck to try and get to the Imperator.

What they didn't know, was the mix of point defense guns and the freshly launched fighter screen would not let much pass.

The CAG's voice filled the fighter net, "Avatar Squadron, primary targets are the shuttles and suicide craft, let the defense battery take the rest."

Bridge

Kaede kept looking through his SPINE, "Good hits, good hits. Keep the batteries alive, the carrier is almost down."

He knew that there was no getting around crossfire in this scenario, and that this had become an unorganized furball of a fight. He looked to Hoshi and gave a light order, "Dispatch the marines, I don't care where they are."

Port Bow Access Halls, Deck 36

The L'Kor team was following the heat signatures, blasting away at everything while the berzerkers at the front continued their rampage towards the auxiliary array generators for the main gun. They still had a ways to go, but the teams were determined to get somewhere.

Port Quarters Access, Deck 36

As Adelphress exited her quarters, there was a large bustling of people. A few members of damage control manning a station, a few off-duty marines with NSPs making makeshift sandbag walls out of anything they could find. One Neko had two NSPs for some reason, and was barking orders at the rest.

A dull thud of an explosion followed by screaming echoed behind one of the locked bulkheads down the hall towards where the L'Kor team had inserted. There was the distinct sound of small hands banging on the door as well as terrified screams and begging in Yamataian before there was a set of small arms fire that silenced the noise.

If Adelphress was going to go anywhere, she had to leave now.

Galley

With boarders now present, the galley was always on a list of targeted rooms for someone. The marines that were eating at one of the table had left in a hurry, two different marines now returning with NSPs called out into the room from an open door,

"Anyone in here? We're escorting you to the armory and getting you to a safe zone."

YSS Imperator
Galley

"The kitchen crew is here!" Senjo Shefu replied, leading the kitchen staff to the Marine. They were then lead to the armory, where they equipped themselves with NSPs. They may be cooks, but they knew how to fight. "Grab your kits." Senjo ordered his staff, turning to the Marine. "Where would you like us stationed?" He asked.

Adelphress looked both ways at the chaos in the corridors. She was about to continue down the hall when there was a sudden burst and screaming. It made her freeze in terror. This was her first real combat experience. The Kuvexians were a few inches away from being able to kill her and everyone in the corridor. The cries of mercy made tears start to form before the Neko with two nsps came over and shook her. "Get your ass to your station!" The neko yelled. Adelphress looked to her and then down the corridor where the cries were coming from. She decided to go to the med-bay, as she doubted she could be any help in a fire fight, except maybe as a separa'shan shield. She slowly went he opposite way of the crying, hesitating to abandon them when she could stay and help fight. In a hasty decision, she whipped herself around and slithered back to her quarters and went in, keeping the door open. Once she got her entire tail in, she went back to the door, putting her back to it with her NSP in her hand. It was not a great place to fight, but at least she was not int he open.

Space

Ayane's Hayabusa broke from the pre-attack formation in a swift maneuver. After taking a cursory glance at the red-outlined shuttles and suicide fighters in her HUD, she set her targeting systems on a large shuttle, that was presumably carrying more boarders.

Ayane initiated a lead pursuit on the shuttle. Once she had calibrated the distance and trajectory, Ayane fired her Hayabusa's heavy cannons along the shuttle's predicted trajectory...

Araena wrung her hands together for a moment, noticing how close the enemy boarding team was to the maintenance part of the main cannon. The damage to those blast doors was being tracked as moving too fast for just a normal crew; they almost seemed to be specialized in breaching these bulkheads.

"We need to repower the main aetheric array! It's not going to be of any use in this fight for us, and the enemies are heading directly for its auxiliary generators." Her hands flew upon the console once more, blurring out commands to both the ship and its crew, with an order to cut off the supply to auxiliary power sources in the whole bow area. There were enough in other places to keep the ship fully functional in this fight, but only just.

Silently, she also monitored the progress in the mall-based pyramid. Still unsure what was going on, she thought of an idea to stop the relatively exposed boarding party. MEGAMI, is it possible to reliably and efficiently defenestrate the kuvexian strike team in the port-side mall? If possible, we'll feed them to there. The voluptuous female hoped that her request, sent by telepathy, wasn't going to be passed off by the stupid machine's prioritization this time.

YSS Imperator
SAINT Office

Without the need for more than a nod from their Shosa, the operatives in the room began arming themselves at the Condition 1 signal. Weapons and equipment were retrieved from the secure lockers bolted against one corner of the control center, expertly equipped and powered up. In no time at all, Aerlia's black-panels were combat ready and eager for instruction just as she herself had finished readying up. "Sssaint is en route." she stated into her communicator to their Captain, leading the head of the column out of the reinforced doors and towards the breach, cloaking as they did so.

YSS Imperator

Shoi Ise Momoya had her rapid reaction team rushing forward. The enemy had boarded the ship, split into two groups, one headed for one of the shopping pyramids, the other forward, towards the main weapon. She had no idea what the other group was doing going for the pyramid, but she she had to head off and stop the one going forward. If they tampered with the main weapon, they could, in the least, disable the Imperator's most powerful offensive armament, at worst, they could possibly destroy the ship.

"Come on, quicker" she hissed, pushing her Sylph power armor ahead, a mass of Mindy's in her wake. She was in close communication with the Megami, having it open sealed emergency bulkheads before her and close them up after her team had passed.

"As soon as we get ahead of them, we're going to move to intercept and cut them off"

Bridge

Hoshi quickly relayed orders to the marine compliment aboard. She moved with speed and efficiency and asked the marines that had not been pushed somewhere to go towards the shopping district to head the L'Kor off from there. listened in on KAMI's feed of what everyone was ordering her to do and asking of her. KAMI showed her each of the requests at super-speed as each request that needed a higher officer's approval came in. She stopped a few and wondered who in their right mind would ask her to do such things while also wondering about some who was such a genius to ask just the right ideas of her.

One of the former ideas was to pool the L'Kor in the pyramid.

"We need them stopped, not rounded up!" Hoshi hissed telepathically to KAMI.

KAMI said, "I know that, Chusa. What would you like to be done instead?"

"Who is closest to the L'Kor team?" Hoshi asked.

"SAINT personnel are closer than any other combat-capable crew members."

Hoshi said as she sat deeper into her chair, "Make sure they kill without hindrance."

Space

The cannons from Ayane's fighter arced out across the falling silence, the first few rounds missing before they smashed into the L'Kor shuttle's hull. The shuttle veered wildly off course before detonating in a ball of fire well before its intended target. While there was a small amount of time to celebrate, it was cut short by another shuttle arcing in Ayane's field of view.

Bridge

Kaede looked at Hoshi, "With haste, Hoshi-Chusa. If they blow the bow generators, we're all going to wake up at Gemini Star Fortress with one hell of a headache."

The Taisa brought up a volumetric display of the two teams around his chair as well as one viewing the carrier. He leaned back and rubbed a temple with his right hand, apparently his SPINE was beginning to strain the older man's mind.

"Keep firing with the primary weapon systems, and see if we can consolidate fire with other vessels."

Port Side Residential, Deck 36

Another bulkhead door collapsed to the L'Kor, and the final door was reached. As the limited defense force readied their NSPs, a plasma torch hissed at the door itself as a spark began cutting at the approximate location of the locking mechanisms. With a dull thud, one locking bar was cut through, then another.

Just as the last one was cut, and the door succumbed to gravity to expose the L'Kor boarding team, the distant sound of a GP-12 echoed down the hall. The phased pulse colliding with the L'Kor's power armor in rapid succession.

Soon, there was more firepower as the medley of Star Army NSPs and rifles intermixed with the L'Kor assault rifles and Aether rifles. In the beginning, there was the painful sound of screaming Neko. It was followed by incomprehensible language and alien screams before it slowly began to subside. The sound of boots on metal sounded as the SAINT team approached, rifles at the ready, and the L'Kor's screams echoed throughout the halls in a stunning orchestra of death.

Access Halls, Bow Section, Deck 36

The L'Kor team was slowed down by another set of armored doors, Aether weapons becoming breaching tools as they cut and blasted the door down.

Momoya could see the approximate location of the boarders as the KAMI relayed their every move. They were approximately side by side, separated by thick metal walls and armor. A few meters ahead was a hall that the marines could use to get in front of the L'Kor, but they had to decide now or the L'Kor would break through the door and burn past it.

Armory

The marine looked at the head chef as if looking through him, "I don't know yet, there is no boarders near this side, but that could soon change. You'll probably either reinforce us or move down to secure a boarding checkpoint."

Each marine was getting their weapons, and looked ready to defend their ship to the last.

YSS Imperator
Bridge
Tactical Station

"Aye, Captain." Ayane responded, her ruby-red eyes wandering from screen to screen as she maintained charge of the Imperator's main weapons systems, keeping tabs on their statuses and whether or not they had suffered any damage. Delicate fingers went to work on the board connected to her main console, creating a firing solution for the ship to execute as the Weapons Operator intended to focus all fire upon the L'Kor carrier's hull breaches; a tactical decision that insisted on near pin-point accuracy and a steady eye. One typo or misnomer and super-battery number fourteen, located towards the stern of the Imperator may fire out of sync with the other turrets. A full barrage instead of a simple, well-executed volley could spell certain doom for an unlucky friendly ship that may or may not be on the other side. Though it was a small risk, it was a risk she wasn't willing to make. The chaos made it near impossible to fire in unison with the other ships, their patterns disciplined though sporadic and random as it appeared they struggled with the parallel of hitting other friendly ships in the area.

Slender fingers, deft in their experience and eager to please, tapped the final solutions into the board and subsequently sent them out for the automated weapons systems to fire.

As the Sharie-class stood, valiant and scarred, it's gun's and missile batteries began to adjust; its hull glistening with the colors of orange, red, blue, and yellow as weapons fire was exchanged both within and without. A flurry of missiles, dozens upon dozens, armed with MSAP warheads, headed towards the multiple hull breaches in the damaged L'Kor carrier; their streaks of fiery glory and brief yet explosive lifestyles intended for one purpose only. To break, to destroy, and to completely annihilate. Though their target was larger, heavier, and most definitely armored to withstand their assault, the one responsible for launching them into certain doom to be shot down and intercepted had targeted the plethora of openings created by their parent ship's heavy batteries. Though dozens would fall, dozens more would make it through the fire and detonate within the soft, vulnerable guts of the enemy carrier.

Meanwhile, point-defense turrets began re-adjusting their barrels, aiming themselves towards the carrier as it detected a swarm of enemy power armor and craft. For a moment, the Imperator was left defenseless from the tiny masses, though it was a fleeting one as a thunder storm of yellow arcs promptly smashed into the oncoming horde.

The slower, lumbering super-heavy turrets would be the climax of this orchestra of well-timed ordinance; their long barrels tilting up and down as minute adjustments were made by sophisticated fire control systems. Having an opportunity finally, with the carrier's injured maneuvers, the lower eight turrets on the Imperator's port side meant that an entire battery was available for use. Like a timed detonation, each barrel of the port battery, numbering fourteen in total, let loose one lance of blue energy towards the vulnerable openings in their target's hull. This continued until the full twenty-eight shots, fired within .1 seconds of each other, finished.

Click to expand...

Space

After the shooting the first shuttle down, Ayane glanced at her HUD for another active target, but another target presented itself in her field of view.

Ayane shifted her fighter towards the arc of the shuttle. However, seeing that the shuttle seemed to be targeting the Imperator, Ayane quickly eyed her calibration, and unleashed a barrage of fire at the wildly flying shuttle.

Her Quarters
Adelphress held her gun tightly as the L'kor finally broke through and started attacking. All she could hear was the firing of guns and screams. She knew her staying was a bad idea- but she needed to protect her crewmembers, or at least help defend them. When she was finally about to slither out into the hall, a burly L'kor soldier ran to her room and saw her, quickly lifting her gun.

Luckily Adelphress was able to punch it out of his hands, but that just made him angrier as the invader tackled the Separa'shan to the floor within her quarters. He was able to get several punches in, hitting her in the face before she was able to whip her tail around and constrain his arms and body. If she was not a python-like Separa'shan, she most certainly would have died. As she squeezed harder and harder with her tail, and the L'kor struggling to move as the life was sucked out of him, another appeared in the doorway. It fired a shot, hitting her in the shoulder.

It was not fast enough though, as the L'kor she was strangling drew his last breath. When she was hit, she released the dead body and fall backward, right next to her NSP. Using her one good arm, she reached for it and quickly shot at least a dozen shots towards the doorway, which made the L'kor more then dead. It fell backwards into the hallway, allowing the door to her quarters to fly shut. Adelphress breathed heavily, laying her head back on the floor.


That was her first kill, and it terrified her.

YSS Imperator
Bridge

Araena self-censored a curse in Seraphim. Damn AIs, never can think ahead for a damn. She gritted her teeth and decided to not try to argue with a stupid computer about why rounding up the enemies in the right place would make it significantly easier to remove them from the ship. So she decided to just go back to monitoring her ship's interior, but splitting part of her focus to the exterior-several of the larger turrets, though the volley fired spectacularly, were taking way, WAY too long to cool down and reload for another potential burst. Another thing on the list. Maybe the AI's just too old to work, too.

Bridge

Hoshi keyed in commands and made sure the SAINT personnel knew what they needed to hit and when—now.

"Shosa Lei'Shela! Tell me you're at the location of enemy L'Kor at this moment!" Hoshi exclaimed over comms to the SAINT Separa'Shan. "Are you and your agents securing them or not?!"

Port Side Residential, Deck 36

As the dying screams of the last L'Kor rang down the long hallways of their ship, the SAINT commander wiped a little viscera from her cheek, looking at it for a moment in disgust. Bodies strewn around, her team's gear drenched from the knee down in slick red liquid. A few of her men appeared to be wounded, patching themselves up best they could in the minute or so they would have before the next inevitable combat. "Hoshi-chusa, SAINT checking in. No major casualties, pushing to next marked area." the Venis reported concisely, reloading her weapon before nodding to the rest of her unit to advance.